The initiative comes in the wake of efforts by immigrant rightsactivists to pressure local governments for sanctuary city policiesof non-cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

On May 8, Watsonville, Calif., became the latest city to declareitself an immigrant sanctuary. In other cities like Chicago,San Francisco and Oakland, activists have pressed city officialsto reaffirm existing policies of refusing to cooperate withfederal immigration officials.

A key inspiration for the NSM organizers is the struggle ofElvira Arellano, a Mexican immigrant who last year madeinternational headlines for publicly defying a deportationorder that would separate her from her U.S.-born son,8-year-old Saúl.

Arellano last year moved into Adalberto United MethodistChurch in Chicago, and religious leaders and activists fromaround the city came to express their support. Internationalmedia covered the story, and solidarity messages poured intoAdalberto from around the world.

“We’re all inspired by the example of Adalberto UnitedMethodist Church, of Elivra and her family, and the courageof that congregation,” said Kim Bobo, executive director ofthe Interfaith Worker Justice in Chicago, a key organizer inthe NSM.

Since Arellano took her stand, the threat of detentions anddeportations that break up immigrant families has become moreurgent as the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE) steps ups its raids.

The detention of a nursing mother after a raid on a factory inNew Bedford, Mass., in March, put the issue of immigrant familyunity back into the national media spotlight. By holdingcoordinated press conferences, the NSM aims to keep it there.

“Families are being broken by a broken immigration system,” Rev.Alexia Salvatierra, of the Los Angeles-based Clergy and Laity United ForEconomic Justice, said in a statement. “Under current policies,detention and deportation are ripping apart parents from children,husbands from wives and sisters from brothers. Through oursanctuaries, we can help change the laws to create policies thatare effective and humane.”

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THE CALL to join the movement was made by groups affiliated witha range of Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church, andMuslim and Sikh organizations.

To participate, individual places of worship must pledge tohost immigrant families in which a family member is facing anorder of deportation. According to a document posted to the NSMWeb site, eligible immigrant families are those with adults witha “good work record,” a “viable case under current law,” and“American citizen children.”

Bobo points out that NSM participants are free to support otherundocumented immigrants who don’t meet all the criteria. Theframework was agreed upon by a broad coalition; others areprepared to go further in providing assistance to theundocumented, she said.

And while the movement hasn’t taken a formal position onproposed immigration reform legislation, most are critical ofcurrent proposals. Interfaith Worker Justice, she said, opposesthe enforcement provisions being discussed in Congress--“andthe proposals on the table would establish a very large guest-workerprogram, which have been proven to be detrimental to workers.”

While the outcome of the legislative debate is uncertain, ICEraids are sure to escalate, and the NSM is preparing for theconsequences--an increase in attempted deportations.

The NSM, based on a brief from the Center for ConstitutionalRights, takes the position that its sanctuary efforts don’tviolate the law, since they are being offered publicly and,as in the case of Elvira Arellano’s vigil, there will be noeffort to hide the immigrants’ whereabouts from ICE officials.

While Bobo doesn’t believe laws will be broken, “ICE may take adifferent point of view,” she said.

Once faith communities agree to host a family, they will beasked to provide material aid in a variety of ways, startingwith “legal triage”--help, including financial assistance,in the most urgent cases.

Families will be hosted for up to three months, and hostsagree to provide assistance in various ways--including mealsand transportation to and from work or school. In addition,the faith communities agree to directly support the NSM itselfthrough fundraising or donations of food, clothing andother goods.

NSM participants are also asked to support immigrant workersagainst the racist backlash. “The immigration reform agendais just inseparable from worker justice at this moment in ourhistory,” Bobo said. “The absolute worst abuse of workers thatwe see around the country is the abuse of immigrant workers,because they have no path to citizenship, and there’sno strong protection of workers’ rights for immigrant workers.”

An NSM statement spells out the operational conclusion:“Despite society’s ongoing desire for the services of daylaborers and immigrant domestics, the climate of racism andharassment has reached a fever pitch. Faith communities arecalled to offer support through: being publicly present atexisting day labor pick-up sites as a peaceful presence in theface of racist and hateful demonstrators; serving as analternative labor/employer match site; and/or being advocatesfor worker issues.”

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THIS PLEDGE to defy the federal government and right-winggroups recalls the original sanctuary movement of the 1980s,when a coalition of some 500 churches and religious organizationshelped refugees from Central America fleeing from death squadsand counterrevolutionary forces aligned with the U.S. government.

That movement--in which activists helped refugees cross theborder and live underground in the U.S.--was the target ofrepeated high-profile prosecutions by federal authorities. Allfailed but one: the conviction of the movement’s co-founder,Rev. John Fife of Tucson, Ariz., along with five others,including a Catholic priest and a nun, who wereconvicted on felony charges and given five years’ probation.

In a 1986 trial of sanctuary activists in Arizona, it emergedthat two sanctuary volunteers were actually undercover agentsof the Immigration and Naturalization Service--the forerunnerof ICE--who drove a family of five refugees from El Salvadoron a trip from Phoenix to Albuquerque, N.M., as they carriedout a public speaking tour for the movement. This was part ofthe INS’s Operation Sojourner, an effort to infiltrate themovement.

But sanctuary activists had expected as much. “We intend tomake it as widely known as possible that we are in violationof the law, an immoral and illegal law,” Fife told the TucsonCitizen in 1982.

Today, Fife, now retired as a pastor, is still active insupport of immigrants. He’s a founder of the group No MoreDeaths, which provides water, food and assistance to undocumentedimmigrants crossing the border, often in defiance of the BorderPatrol and right-wing vigilantes like the Minutemen.

Two student activists in the group, Shanti Sellz and DanielStrauss, were arrested in 2005 for taking three undocumentedimmigrants to receive medical care, although charges wereeventually dropped.

“These efforts are not only humanitarian aid efforts, they’recommunities of resistance to the kind of violations of humanrights the government policy is involved in,” Fife said in arecent interview with Amy Goodman on the Democracy Now! radio/TVprogram.

“And active resistance involves direct aid to the victims.It also involves speaking out and trying to get...borderenforcement policy changed so that we’re no longer involvedin massive violations of human rights and all that death andsuffering.”

The Interfaith Committee’s Bobo said that she expects the NSM’sorganizing to dovetail with efforts to implement sanctuary citypolicies, pointing to the organizing work to get the Washington,D.C., City Council to pass legislation strengthening the city’sstand.

The sanctuary movement, moreover, provides a counterweight tothe spate of anti-immigration legislation at the state and locallevel--most recently, the law passed in a referendum in the Dallassuburb of Farmers Branch, which seeks to prevent landlords fromrenting housing to undocumented immigrants.

By going national and highlighting the sanctuary work alreadytaking place at the local level, the movement aims to alterthe terms of debate over immigration, its leaders said. “Throughour sanctuaries,” said Rev.Salvatierra of Los Angeles, “we canhelp change the laws to create policies that are effective andhumane.”

About us:

Solidarity Across Borders is a Montreal-based network of migrants, immigrants, refugees, and allies engaged in the struggle for justice and dignity for migrants and refugees. We mobilize for all who are caught in the immigration regime and for all who fight against deportations, detentions, and security certificates.